I can smell the chain of causality hiding in some dusty pages that have no dust.

I can feel the wisdom in the brown brittle pages I can not touch.

I can tell this is going to take days from my life and give me years.

Sigh.

Sometimes life has its little paradoxes. “The trick is not to mind. -E.M.Smith”

(That quote, BTW, I originally wrote on a drawing I made of someone ‘snapping their fingers’ with thumb and middle finger ‘mid snap’, and a candle flame rising from the hot spot… palm up.)

OK, what’s all this crypto-poetic-babble about? Yet Another Causality Cascade…

Sera, in ‘tips’ T9 pointed at an interesting article discussing the potential for revolution in China. OK, kind of interesting I guess. China is kind of important. If they have a revolution, from whom will we borrow our suit and ‘walking around money’?

A surprising number of people in China have been writing and talking about “revolution”. First came word, in November, that China’s new leaders have been advising their colleagues to read Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic book on the French Revolution, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (The Old Regime and the Revolution), which subsequently has shot to the top of China’s best seller lists. Just this past week, Chinese scholar Zhao Dinxing, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago, felt the need to publish an article (in Chinese) laying out the reasons China won’t have a revolution (you can read an English summary here). Minxin Pei, on the other hand, thinks it will.

It then goes on to some excerpts about the reasons for the Russian Revolution.

The answer, he argues, lies in the fact that Russian society changed dramatically, but its political system did not, leading to an explosive disconnect between the two:

So, around 1900, we have a mechanically rather than organically structured state that denies the population any voice in government, and yet, at the same time, aspires to the status of a global power. This aspiration compels it to promote industrial development and higher education, which has the inevitable effect of shifting much opinion and the power to make decisions to private citizens. Pre-1905 tsarism thus suffered from an irreconcilable contradiction. A not-insignificant segment of the population received secondary and higher education, acquiring, in the process, Western attitudes, and yet it was treated as being on the same level with the illiterate peasantry, that is, unfit to participate in the affairs of state. Capitalist industrialists and bankers made major decisions affecting the country’s economy and employment, yet had no say in that country’s politics because politics was the monopoly of the bureaucracy …

At that point, I’m hooked. I’ve been feeling exactly that way. The Federal bureaucracy does what it damn well pleases despite what the population wants, or votes for. Congress and Obummer are having pissing matches over which of THEM gets to do what they damn well please, but not bothering to worry about the rest of us. (Forget the 1% or the 99%, it’s all of us that are getting shafted.) Even The Supremes decided to have Obamacare be the law of the land ‘because they could define it as a tax and it would be legal’ vs not.

We have an ever growing “disconnect” between the people and the EFFECTIVE political structure. (What the political sturcture nominally was; died a long time ago. I’m not sure what parts of the constitution are still being followed, but I know that not one word of it is in control of anything anymore. Congress certainly does not express the ‘will of the people’ and the only ones represented in D.C. are folks who can cut a $Million check and not notice. For BOTH parties. Ask the Democrats about who paid whom how much from GE and the Solar industries…)

So now I’m wondering “Just how much have we been down this path before and I’m just too young to remember the street signs?”

The author goes on:

Read that again carefully, line by line, with present-day China in mind, and I think you’ll find some fascinating food for thought. I have often observed that I know of no country that has changed as much in the past 30 years as China has, in terms of the kind of practical freedom people experience in their day-to-day lives. The greatest challenge facing China’s leaders is how — or whether — a fundamentally closed political system (rule by an elite) can cope with the dramatically more open economy and society that present-day China has become. That’s why they’re reading Tocqueville.

Well I’m damn certain that the USA is a “closed political system (rule by an elite)”. Kerry and Baby Bush went to the same school, joined the same club, had the same peer group, collect money for favors from the same elite, and I’m sure I’ll never shake hands with anyone from that stratum. Nor will they ever hear my voice, and they certainly will not care.

So what’s it to be? Do we become a dramatically more closed economy, or does revolution re-open the political system to ‘real folks’? The thesis of that article is that the present state is unstable, so where does stability lie? Is this a ‘one way’ to revolution? Or a two way street and we’re headed the other way (toward the tyranny that China has left, as they go their way to revolution…)

Inquiring minds want to know?

But I don’t yet.

So I’ve got to get the book and read it. Like all those folks in China.

Damn.

A ‘Hungry Mind’ does not like to be told that it may have gone shopping, but it will be days to get the slow roast pork done…

You can download Alexis de Tocqueville Title: The Old Regime and the Revolution as a free pdf or ebook here:

Which I did. On looking over the table of contents, I kept thinking “That sure looks like the USA. And That and THAT”.
Followed closely by the echo of “but isn’t it even more like the EU?”…

Now I’ve got to read the whole thing to ‘scratch that itch’ of just knowing that someone ‘with clue’ has already worked out all the linkages before and all I need to do is listen carefully and make sure I don’t embrace too many exceptions that are not really exceptions…

From the book:

CHAPTER IV.
How the same Institutions had been established over nearly all Europe,
and were every where falling to pieces 29

CHAPTER V.
How Centralization crept in among the old Authorities, and supplanted
without destroying them 79

CHAPTER VII.
How the Capital of France had acquired more Preponderance over
the Provinces, and usurped more Control over the Nation, than
any other Capital in Europe 95

CHAPTER VIII.
That Frenchmen had grown more like each other than any other
People 101

CHAPTER IX.
That these Men, who were so alike, were more divided than they
had ever been into petty Groups, each independent of and indifferent
to the others 106

CHAPTER X.
How the Destruction of political Liberty and Class Divisions were
the Causes of all the Diseases of which the old Regime died. 124

CHAPTER XI.
Of the kind of Liberty enjoyed under the old Regime, and of its Influence
upon the Revolution 137

CHAPTER XIII.
How, toward the middle of the Eighteenth Century, literary Men
became the leading Politicians of the Country, and of the Effects
thereof Page 170

CHAPTER XIV.
How Irreligion became a general ruling Passion among Frenchmen
in the Eighteenth Century, and of the Influence it exercised over
the Character of the Revolution 182

CHAPTER XV.
How the French sought Reforms before Liberties 192

CHAPTER XVI.
That the Reign of Louis XVI. was the most prosperous Era of the
old Monarchy, and how that Prosperity really hastened the Revolution
206

CHAPTER XVn.
How Attempts to relieve the People provoked Rebellion 218

CHAPTER XVm.
Of certain Practices by means of which the Government completed
the revolutionary Education of the People 228

CHAPTER XIX.
How great administrative Changes had preceded the political Revolution,
and of the Consequences thereof 234

So many of those things are familiar. People pressed into the same molds. Centralization of power, trying to “reform” and making things worse in the process. Old regime liberties leading to an unacceptance of how things were going. Common laws and rules being pushed everywhere, and the loss of power by the parts.

Well, I had bought de Tocqueville “Democracy in America” as it seemed to describe well the differences between the old America and Europe and pointed where we’d lost some of those old America ways. Just barely into it, I’m now thinking I need to put it down and read this one instead. Even if I can’t touch the pages of a pdf… and the dust on the cover is only photographic…

People have not changed since the time of the French Revolution. What motivates them. What they will do and under what circumstances. How civilizations age and eventually break down. The toys and tools change, but not the whys and hows.

So looks like I’ve got another couple of days ‘time commitment’ to save a few months of wandering in the intellectual woods…

Now, of all the methods that have been devised for
the division of nations into classes, unequal taxes are
the most pernicious and effective. They tend to isolate
each class in*emediably; for when the tax is unequal,
the line is drawn afresh every year between the
taxables and the exempts ; the distinction is never allowed
to fade. Every member of the privileged class
feels a pressing and immediate interest in keeping it
up, and maintaining his isolation from the taxable
community.
All, or nearly all public measures begin or end with
a tax. Hence, when two classes of citizens do not feel
the taxes alike, they cease to have common interests
and feelings in common ; they do not require to meet
for consultation ; they have no opportunity and no desire
to act in concert.

Nick is correct.
But there is more to it. The FIAT currency system is what allowed much of the rapid economic expansion. Its resetting after the second world war was a good basis on which economies could grow. There was however one major problem. It required ethical management especially in politics and the banks. The areas where we now do _not_ have ethics are in politics and the banks, these have become entities that run for their own benefit. The banks salami slice customer money away, or even invent its existence, and then fund the politicians who try to expand their power and enrich themselves and their friends including the banks. This is one reason for the ‘revolving door’ of appointments between financiers and government.

In the US we have seen a continual pushing at the edges of the Constitution. Instead of seeing Congress, Administration and Supreme Court as _just_ the federal government, they seem try to usurp more power over States, disregarding the 10th Amendment or trying to prove that they _can_ disregard it – why? Nobody seems prepared to defend the constitution and tell Congress and Administration – that what is proposed may be an excellent idea – but it is NOT THEIR JOB. The effect of this is that power is becoming centralized into the Washington bubble. A system that is being run to empower and enrich the center has tried to make the people dependent on ‘the central system’ to provide pensions and health care from that bubble to ‘tie them in’ as dependent voters for more central support. Even the States are tied in to be dependent on federal pork. This was not envisaged by the founders. At State level the same bribe by dependency approach is taken so that States are now paying huge amounts out to retain the dependency of the voters. Indeed like some evil economics fractal the same pattern can be seen at all levels. It has the same weakness the money for pensions, sick pay, unemployment, health-care – must be paid or the dependent people will become unruly.

But as Nick points out – the money being used to bribe the people is actually not there. In fact due to the fiddling in the Banks and the ‘clever systems’ in the Federal Reserve, its not there for the center either – as they are not averse to tricking each other as in the LIBOR setting fiddling. (This may explain Germany’s sudden desire to actually have _real_ gold reserves not gold held for it elsewhere). So now the Politicians and Bankers are in a rather awkward position. They have several hundred million people they have promised largesse to, who are dependent on it, and have been scalped by taxes to support it. Except that there is no funding for the promised largesse – indeed it does not exist. There are not enough rich young taxpayers – unemployment among the young funders of these schemes is running at extreme levels – Spain it is nearly 50% unemployed now dependents rather than paying in. At the other end of the scale people are living well beyond retirement age so the number of dependents is rapidly _increasing_. This is the real reason for Bernanke and Obama’s desperation to raise the debt ceiling. They need to create more ‘funny money’ to keep feeding the tiger that they are mounted on. EU is in the same boat and as E.M points out so is China. People laugh at Spain for the number of empty towns with unused airports which were built for buyers that have not turned up. China has the same empty towns – everyone seemed to think that this was some clever scheme of the Chinese – but they have the same issues as Spain currently hidden under a housing bubble as Spain’s had been.
So now some cracks are appearing in the dam and one wonders which will crash first and who will survive. Russia seems to be in a good position. But this will be a worldwide crash it if happens. An EU crash or a US crash will not be a spectator sport everyone will be pulled into the hole.

Unfortunately, we may be about to witness the collapse of what has become a giant worldwide ponzi scheme.

The feelings and sentiments among the populations remain the same through time.
What’s different in our times with a strong move into the direction of centralization of powers (alway’s bad for individual freedoms) is the introduction of what I call the “The Cancer of the EU Management System”. It’s a system based on International and national treaties, mandates and directives managed by the EU Commision and their army of 40.000 servants focused on harsh implementation and expansion. It’s a system unique of our times. The structure (top down), the tools (computers, networks, lawyers, civil servants, economic and financial aid resulting in more treaties and as a last resort police, military, even foreign military to implement and enforce those treaties, mandates and directives through a system fines (big fines) for starters, power shifts in case of crises (Berlusconi in Italy and the Government of Greece) and if that doesn’t work the introduction of armed forces to perform bombing runs, drone attacks to boots on the ground. This is never called a war but a “humanitarian” mission (Libya, Mali (a result of the mess made in Libya) etc, etc.

This EU Management System has it’s fingerprints left on the UN (Agenda 21), almost all nations and countries in the world, thousands of NGO’s and today has taken total control over the Central Banks in Europe, food production, energy, you name it. It doesn’t take long before the entire planet is effected by this “cancer”. Those in control, the banksters and the elite get anonymous. Contrary to the NAZI’s, they don’t wear uniforms and it’s impossible to accuse them and bring them iin front of a court (NO NEURENBERG for them) althoug their policies already have killed thousands and turned hundreds of millions into poverty. The system of governmental bodies, agencies and bureau’s is so complex that almost nobody knows the source of a new directive let alone protest it. Protesters in the streets attack banks, shops, local government buidings but the reality isthat they are powerless.
Last year bikers went to Brussels to protest a new rule that forced them to perform annual vehicle inspections of their motorbikes. As it turned out the agency responsible for the new rules and their execution through the National government bodies wasn’t even situated in Brussels. Against the time the bikers took the legal road to protect their interests all they found out that the term to file opposition had been terminated leaving them with a huge leagal bill and no results. This shows how powerless people have become. National Governments have turned into executive offices and local politics have turned into a Muppet Show of well paid players. And while we vote and focus onour leaders the cancer continues to grow.
In the mean time this environmetalist fascist clique of cowards is sucking our wallets dry, tearing down all the pillars of our past prosperity as they sink us into the new Middle Ages.
The big question of today is not if but how we fight this rotten and corrupt system.
During the French Revolution the people went after the King and his elites. After the second World War the Allied Forces went after some of the NAZI criminals who were not in the rocket business and put them on trial at Neurenberg. Today we’re after a system with the character of an invisible octopus. You can’t attack it, you can’t shoot or bomb it and the few that go public can be replaced with no harm done to the system. This is the ultimate fascist sytem and it can’t be fought without inflicting great harm to our own interest.
Even if the system collapse because of a financial melt down the core stays unharmed.
We take the heat as they enjoy the fruits of misplaced solidarity. As long as they fund the money to let their army of 40.000 servants do their job and our nations continue process and implement the mountain of directives we’re screwed.

Thank you, E.M. Smith, for your excellent peripheral vision and for bringing this to our attention.

Society is deeply troubled – disconnected from political leaders – who are selfishly disconnected from each other and from reality. Revolution is certainly one (unattractive) possibility.

IMHO, the pseudo-conflict between modern science and religion has enhanced self-centeredness in mankind and created a significant part of the problem.

This image of the creator, destroyer and sustainer of life – an image that is compatible with both modern science and religion – might help us get right-sized and capable of living together in a manner that would benefit everyone.

Refering to my previous posting I can’t see how a revolution today could break the current system in place.
The moment the revolutionary camp is winning interntional treaties allow for foreign forces to intervene. And while this happens the grid stays up in the air, the people pulling the strings have a nice vacation at a holiday resort in Costa Rica only to return after the clean up has been done and the corpses burried. These people have learned from the French Revolution, Napoleon, the Nazi’s, the USSR and they have spun a web that enables them to control without presence or accountability and no way of legal prosecution. Yes, we can drag a leader out of the White House, tar and feathers included but we can’t make a dent in the system that he represents. It’s as simple as that.

The creation of the United States Constitution was a step in the right direction just as the Magna Carta was a step in limits in government. But there is no real enforcement authority that is not in government hands. Depending on the honor of lawyers and politicians does not work for any length of time. We need an independent way to enforce the provisions of the contract, as written, as agreed to. No more, as needed, modifications to a “Living Instrument”, that is modern jurist legal opinion of constitutional law. There is a way to modify the constitution and it is not Supreme Court decisions, Executive orders or Legislative acts. Government can not be trusted to abide the contract, there must be an independent enforcement authority. pg

The major points that would quickly and easily resolve the US issues are simple but hard to enact.
1. Limit all federal elected positions to 2 terms. In theory some could still be “career” politicians but federal service would be capped at 24 years 12 in senate 4 in house and 8 as president and how often would that actually happen.
2. Return the senate to how it was originally established with state legislatures choosing the state representatives this will severely restrict lobbying and any lobbying that does happen would likely be electronic and thus more easily recorded and tracked.
3. Take away federal authority to directly tax individuals return to the federal government billing the states on a per capita basis and force each state to raise its funds in what ever means the voters accept. This will enable people to vote with their feet as well as ballots quickly eliminating systems that are imbalanced and making mistakes and test runs more fluid and less costly.
4. I would also like to limit the authority of all unelected positions and would push for a 3 term limit at the state level.

I can see no way to force those in power to reliquish that power and allow these reforms with out revolution. I have fought for this country before and will again I fear.

The Russian revolution was a lot less vindictive and bloody than previous examples of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I think it is the model for modern nations that have achieved the middle fifty percent slice of GDP-PP.
What’s a modern nation in my context? One with some industrial base, an economy that is less than half natural resource extraction, and an existing political system that has survived more than one decade.
I do not think Wen Jiabao will ever dangle from a lamp post.

Good post will try to download pfd and read tonight, Great comments , we cannot resolve a problem that is undefined.
Fixing non-problems is the way of our political bureaucrats, for thats what they call power.
@ R.de.Haan, i think you have the tool in front of you.
The best “solution” is the one that damages society the least.
The American Constitution, was written by men with an honest view of human nature, our nature seems unchanging. Possibly cause it works, survival wise.
Was trying to get my mind around, what is civilization? Stole some space on E.M’s 2nd last post.
Basically when we can cooperate we are richer, when we can’t trust each other, our energy is spent on survival.
Our Elite “Leadership” is a normal product of easy living.
Consider, who do you know, who wants the job of, town council, country reeve, State or Federal parliamentarian?
Nobody in their right mind wants the job. 5 laws of human stupidity?
By default the crazies, axe-grinders & frightened twits are what seek power through elected office.
Sufficient money, puts your twit in office.
“We gave you a republic, if you can keep it”, indicates that this trend is not new.
E.M’s post on demographics and the tyranny of the cities is important here, I think.
If civilization is a shared illusion, city dwellers are in the most danger, when the illusion collapses.
Its possible this could be explained to these citizens.
Could treason be defined as seeking to destroy civilization?Or the illusion there of?

Our best hope for calm repair, is through being able to get the attention of the population, this medium has potential.
This tool, the quick communication between far-flung folk, is a wildcard.
The delusion of power seeking, is that the tools to hold power, destroy the wealth one seeks to rule over.
Which is other people, people just do not seem to like being pushed, nudged and robbed.
As authority is exerted, productivity falls.
So power has a law of diminishing returns, I think.

I am still fuzzy around the edges here, the sense of fragments coming together is upon me, I better go do some productive work. I want to believe in civilization, so am still thinking a solution is available through our existing institutions. Too many re-inventions of the wheel are useless.
Pogo.. I have seen the enemy, and he is us.
Are we the solution?

We separated church and state, and then used public funds to create a scientific community that is even more dogmatic and closed-minded than the religious community.

Modern scientists claim truth can only be realized by experimentation and observation. But the best experimental data and observations [1] revealed the same reality that ancient religious leaders realized by contemplation, meditation, and prayer.

After 1945, scientists purposely falsified information about the creator, destroyer and sustainer of life – the same source of energy that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Aug 1945 and compelled world leaders to

_ a.) Establish the United Nations on 24 Oct 1945 and
_ b.) Employ scientists to falsified information about the Sun.

The enemy is instinctive fear and self-centeredness (the survival instinct) and lack of ability to grasp that a Higher Power controls everything through a combination of

_ c.) Cause-and-effect (science)
_ d.) Coincidence (spirituality)

The solution is a merger of science and spirituality to reduce egoism and re-establish contact with the RTG (Reality, Truth, God) that can be realized by:

@E.M.: You are indeed a philosopher. You realize, deeply in your heart, that this is what those Mayans said about those changing eras or Souls ….Do not sigh, just buy more popcorn, though, just in case you know, it would be better to watch it from a few thousand miles away….say in south America. (These consequences are the effect of the changing global magnetic fields).

@Omanuel: Science and Religion are the same and were always the same: Traditional symbols are the actual blueprints of a scientific and measurable reality (Read Rene Guenon´s : “Symbols of the Sacred Science”-Rene Guenon was a French mathematician and philosopher who died at Cairo, Egypt, being considered, an Ulehma, a saint); forget “esotericism”, take for example the caduceus= sine + cosine, a Birkeland´s current, a solar system moving to the apex or energy currents moving along the axis of your body. It´s an apocalypse, i.e.: The disclosure or revelation from above, now becoming understandable for us.

“China has the same empty towns – everyone seemed to think that this was some clever scheme of the Chinese”

I recall reading a year or so ago that a Chinese person did not have the ability to invest in the way say a US person with some money can, for instance in stocks, and bonds ( & funds thereof). Thus, money was used to build houses or apartments they did not expect to live in, but on a different time horizon than those in the US that expect to “flip” their purchase in a week or month or two. This does not negate what you wrote. I’m not sure the Chinese were being clever or even thought they were. Just responding to their circumstances.

Many people in the West think that the Chinese government is leap-frogging ahead by sending its best and brightest to do post-Doc’s in US universities.
A Chinese post-Doc suggested this to me in a casual supremacist way. I replied that what they were doing was train revolutionaries in the West who were going to return to the homeland and wipe the floor with the communists.
He then launched into a defense of the Chinese political system and a denunciation of US politics and political parties and demanded, demanded that I prove the Western system was better.
“How long have you been in America?”
“Three years”
“When was the last time you were asked to pay a bribe?”
“Never”
“When you were in China, how often were….”
I said to his retreating back. He waited a full week until he came back into the lab.
We are training a whole generation of people to not trust politicians and to demand an end to corruption; at least all those not in Chicago.

The Russian revolution was a lot less vindictive and bloody than previous examples of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ”

The revolution wasn’t at all bloody. The February Revolution of 1917 bought Alexander Kerensky to power. The blood came from the Bolsheviks, who started a Revolution against Kerensky’s government, the October Revolution of 1917.

@omanuel, The lack of grace in modern science is sad. ”
I don’t know”, seems to be modern blasphemy.
Its almost like, if we cannot understand, it can not exist.
I was always charmed by Dyson, Feynman and Dunne, they knew the joy of discovery and that ignorance is a state of grace.
It has to be, as each answer opens a multitude of questions, that we could not know to ask before.So inquiring minds know less as they learn more.(I might have that backwards)

Well I’m into Tocqueville to pg 173, past bedtime, much to let sink in.
1764 France is Canada 2012. Probably USA too.
loved this from pg 75,
“Ordinary judges are bound by rule to repress illegal acts: But the council can always overstep rules for a salutary purpose.”
So what we are reacting to, too much capricious government, one size fits no-one its all been done before, power without responsibility, destruction of productivity. the past is the present.
good night.

“China has the same empty towns – everyone seemed to think that this was some clever scheme of the Chinese”

I recall reading a year or so ago that a Chinese person did not have the ability to invest in the way say a US person with some money can, for instance in stocks, and bonds ( & funds thereof). Thus, money was used to build houses or apartments they did not expect to live in, but on a different time horizon than those in the US that expect to “flip” their purchase in a week or month or two. This does not negate what you wrote. I’m not sure the Chinese were being clever or even thought they were. Just responding to their circumstances.

OK the occasional dwelling for investment/flip… but look at this report

Producing lot’s of real estate increases the GDP. Makes some people happy. Vit not of the real estate makes no profit or isn’t sold. Spain will be all right. The government kust proposed to provide a Spanish pasport for any person who will buy Spanish real estate.

R. de Haan echoes my thoughts. The elite learned from the old aristocracy. They now rule through layers of underlings. There is the Bilderberg Group but I think these are just the very high level pawns and not the true leaders.

…Rockefeller has also for many years hosted annual luncheons at the family’s Westchester County Pocantico estate for the world’s finance ministers and central bank governors, following the annual Washington meetings of the World Bank and IMF. These luncheons were held at the Playhouse. These regular meetings were also attended by the other internationalists in the family, John D 3rd, up until his death in 1978…http://hubpages.com/hub/The_Chase_Bank

Some of the people who showed up at these luncheons, possibly as ‘underlings’ may be the true leaders but who knows. I feel it is much more likely the underlings go to THEM.

Informed jury amendments have been filed as an initiative in seven states and legislation has been introduced in the Alaska state legislature….

Today, the constitutions of only two states — Maryland and Indiana — clearly declare the nullification right, although two others — Georgia and Oregon — refer to it obliquely. The informed jury movement would like all states to require that judges instruct juries on their power to serve, in effect, as the final legislature of the land concerning the law in a particular case….

Those who have endorsed the right of a jury to judge both the law and the facts include Chief Justice John Jay, Samuel Chase, Dean Roscoe Pound, Learned Hand and Oliver Wendell Holmes. According to the Yale Law Journal in 1964, during the first third of the 19th century judges did inform juries of the right, forcing lawyers to argue “the law — its interpretation and validity — to the jury.” By the latter part of the century, however, judges and state law were increasingly moving against nullification. In 1895 the US Supreme Court upheld the principle but ruled that juries were not to be informed of it by defense attorneys, nor were judges required to tell them about it….

No John it’s not the nuke risk. Too many nukes around to build super cities as a decoy or an alternative place to go. The Building industry in China is based on a totally corrupt system. That;s why appartment blocks tumble, new bridges collapse and tunnels cave in. No China is building to grow it’s GNP to make it look good. Spain did the same thing. The building boom kept the cheap euro loans flowing in untill the boom went bust and the bubble broke.
Spain still hasn’t arrived at the bottom. Prices will go down to a much lower level. Why? Unemployment continues to grow and the number of people to be kicked out of their homes is still on the rise. And the bank just started to depreciate their real estate portfolio’s.
For Spain the crises is just beginning, soon to be joined by France. Europe has been the biggest trade partner with China. This is now changing rapidly as the number of containers with imports from China is declining. As a result we will see a decline in exports from Europe (read Germany) to China as well. Same goes for the trade between China and the USA. The economic set back this year will be brutal compared to last year. This is because even the tripple A countries like the Netherlands have put harsh austerity measures in place to reduce their state deficits within the 3% limit allowed by the EU. Because the Dutch government just like any other government these days don’t reduce any spending the population feeds the money through higher taxation. Higher taxation reduces public spending. And when public spending goes down the drain, so do the jobs and all the private companies already hanging by a threat. Austerity without any reduction in Government spending turns the economy in a downward spiral untill it hits rock bottom. And I predict we will get there sooner than we think. The Eurozone, the USA and China. They are all aboard the Titanic and it’s sinking. Now witg the crises in Malgeria, a huge gas and oil producer, the Mali intervention by France and some EU countries, the continuing unrest in Libya and Egypt, Iran, in short Persia, the entire Middle East and North Africa is nothng less than the blank check needed tohike fuel prices to a level where we speed up the current crises and accelerate just before the steep curve.
In the mean time we have Japan limping into a state of economic despair risking all it’s Chinese assets fighting over a few rocks off the Chinese coast. In short, there are to many holes in the ship to prevent it from sinking. 2013 will be the year of the “Second Great Depression”.

Finished first read of Tocqueville, will need to absorb and reread, but first impression, he makes me laugh, human nature is unchanged, here we go again
.
The personality types that lust to control the wealth and activities of others, seem blind to the idea that , others do not need their help. That their help is poison to the “helped”,
pg 238 Its Obama-care and Bill C-68 here in Canada.
Unworkable laws, to improve the good of the little people, protect us from an unproven harm that is aggravated by the decreed fix.

His description of the writers and their detachment from practical reality, describes modern academics to a T. And the new breed of politicians are all graduates of political science classes, so they share these delusions.
That the voluntarily nonproductive can best control the means of production.

I draw some hope, that we, the citizens are not as isolated from each other as the French cliches he describes. Although the divisive games of recent politicians seem to be trying to help us there.
We have much more in common with people who produce, than those who seek to live off of the work of others, most of the UN and our own bureaucracies could be considered to be mentality ill. They are too frightened to stop their grasping after the illusion of power and are the cause of most of the ills they claim need fixing.

This years return to depression in the North America will wake up a few more, formerly fat,comfortable and busy with their own affairs type people.

And this internet is an interesting tool, before I found WUWT I was feeling like civilization was on the skids, the transparent lunacy of CAGW was everywhere and I suspected it was being used to rape the taxpayer. Now I have an idea of why civilization is on the skids.

Information is power and I think this medium has caught the manipulators of the masses by surprise.

John Robertson says:
18 January 2013 at 5:24 am
…. this internet is an interesting tool, before I found WUWT I was feeling like civilization was on the skids, the transparent lunacy of CAGW was everywhere and I suspected it was being used to rape the taxpayer. Now I have an idea of why civilization is on the skids.

Information is power and I think this medium has caught the manipulators of the masses by surprise.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Agreed. And people ARE waking up. Six years ago no one was interested. Try to tell them about the Fraction Reserve Rip-off or the Food Cartels power grab and you got a big YAWN.
Now I carry around in my head titles for people to look up on the internet prepared to write them on my business card.

I stay away from religion because it turns the discussion into a discussion about religion and I stay away from the discussion of politics. I can’t stand either party anyway.

My goal is to wake people up to the fact we are being ripped off, that the Media is not our friend but in the pocket of those who want to defraud us and the bureaucracy is terminally corrupt.

Yes – and I am starting to get slightly shameful responses from long term warmers I know. One of them, bless him, told me he knew it was happening, because “I read Nature”. He didn’t say that he also thought it was happening because of his left leaning politics, and because of left leaning groupthink,

My research shows the collapse of the world economy was planned and orchestrated. Look up the Fabians, London School of Economics (LSE) and the Third Way. link

George Bernard Shaw, a founding member of the Fabians had a big mouth and gives us a glimpse into their thoughts. link
(If you read no other links read this one)

John Dewey, the ‘Father of American Education’ who destroyed our education system was a founder of the American Fabian Society. His goal was to dumb down US education so it would produce unthinking slaves socialists instead of highly inventive individualists. link and link and link
A comment on the last link

It would be more accurate to say that John Dewey and his ideological peers created the USSR.

Dewey had written more then a dozen books by 1917 (the year of the revolution that created the USSR) all dedicated to furthering socialism and he had already helped spawn the modern educational system in America.

Clinton, the traitor, was a Rhodes Scholar (some times linked to theMilner Round Table Groups ) and teaches at LSE. He pushes the Third Way that is a product of LSE. Tony Blair, former chair of the Fabian Society presided over the recent hanging of the Fabian Stain Glass Window at LSE while Clinton was present.
I find it ominous that this very explicit window is now on public display.

Why do I call Clinton a traitor? Because you can trace the final collapse of the USA directly back to him. He is the one who added the last straws.

1. The ratification of NAFTA and WTO which caused suffering through out the world and the USA. For example Mexico bankrupted 75% of her farmers within ten years.

TREASON: Clinton and friends sold US military secrets to China and thereby make China a military threat to the USA: link (bottom two paragraphs) and and link and link and link

And the continuation of “technology transfer agreements”

US group gives China details of nuclear technology

By Leslie Hook in Beijing

Westinghouse Electric has handed over more than 75,000 documents to its Chinese customers as the initial part of a technology transfer agreement that it hopes will secure the company’s place in the world’s fastest-growing nuclear market.

3. Clinton set up housing market collapse with five banking laws. (It is interesting that the easy to read guide to US banking laws has been pulled off the internet by the US government.) Clinton’s signed the laws that repealed the McFadden Act of 1927, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 lead to the Formation of Mega Banks. He is also responsible for the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that was responsible for marginal mortgage loans doomed to fail and the unregulated CDSs used to insure the banks against foreclosure.

4. Clinton failed to get the UN BIO-DIVERSITY TREATY/Wildlands Project through congress only because of an eleventh hour intervention by four people and a map produced by Dr. Michael Coffman The Wildlands Project would set up to one-half of America into core wilderness reserves and interconnecting corridors (red), all surrounded by interconnecting buffer zones (yellow). No human activity would be permitted in the red, and only highly regulated activity would be permitted in the yellow areas. Sure sounds like a way to implement Agenda 21 doesn’t it? Failing the ratification of the treaty Clinton set up the Council on Sustainable Development.

Yet despite all the evidence that Clinton is a traitor who actively pursued the destruction of his country and is the obvious author of the current mess we are in, he is held up as one of the great American presidents but then FDR who stole the gold from American citizens and gave it to private bankers is also considered ‘Great’ It is amazing how well the MSM propaganda brain washes people.

Gail Combs, we go thro the stages, from curious, to concerned to obsessed with fixing the problem. often we are the problem, that projection thing.
What you resist, persists ??
People only pay attention, when they believe their survival is at threat, otherwise its just noise,
I observe this in my family, most are busy with their children and grandchildren, these are their priority, politics and grand global causes are way down the list. Madness such as AGW is nothing they want to waste energy on.

This is why I think the control via propaganda will fail, most of my relatives dismiss CAGW as a religion,they ignore it , as not worth arguing about. Our “future masters” seem to take silence as agreement, a common delusion of the power obsessed.
Another parallel with France 1764?

So the heavy hit to the wallet, is waking people up, they are getting cranky.
Next a scapegoat will be sacrificed to placate the mob.
Is the UN being groomed for that role?
Course the anger of the mob is usually underestimated.
The most spectacular violence will occur when the true believers turn on their high priests and Al Gore’s blatant hypocrisy just turned a few more.
In many ways we need do little, may be wise to do nothing but document the people who must not be allowed positions of authority.(again or ever).
Whats the best approach? Flow charts, evidence divided into proven, implied,suspected and red herrings?
Stupid and evil is a self defeating combination, often all one has to do is hold up a mirror.

” This is one reason for the ‘revolving door’ of appointments between financiers and government.”

Also consider that it is the recycling of hot money (mainly from drug cartels) that keeps the banks in business. They take a 30% cut of those transactions. It also explains why the drug war continues despite its obvious failure. It keeps the banks (and thus the system) in business.

The fact that Clinton and Carter have come out against prohibition indicates that at least some factions of the ruling class are ready to give up prohibition. Do the banks have a new source of funds? For now the Treasury.

The question is: As you have become really an aristocratic society, where politicians are the new nobility, or rather the courtesans/butlers/servants, and corporations/ banks owners /families the new nobility, it seems time is due for some foreseeable “blossoming” of some kind.
Let us never forget that, once upon a time, during a lost and forgotten golden era, there were real noble men, who by merit of their own conscious labors became enlightened men, so were they recognized by the people, as human beings incapable of “selling their souls” (incapable of commercing their principles and convictions), and who were exalted to lead positions.
In the last centuries the world became up side down, then there is an urgent need of a “magnetic reversal” of 180º. “They” know it and it is for sure they are mortally scared (an unexplainable attitude for us common men who are not afraid of loosing any other value than our manhood); so they are now desperately accumulating metallic gold, ignoring that the real gold to be treasured is the untouchable and almost invisible gold blossoming from our hearts. So, the die is cast…..then, let us buy more popcorn and watch the show!

What the USA needs, is a shaman. Someone who is outside our culture to clearly identify the root causes (not symptoms) of problems. Guns aren’t the problem. Even the debt isn’t the problem. All symptoms of ego. Time is an illusion. No past. No future. Only now is present.

But I think it a bit more complicated than that. It is an ecology, of sorts, with many “Educated Idiots” that are “drinking their own ink”, but also a fair number of Vultures who know exactly what they are doing, but have no moral compass.

Take Soros, for example. News flow is that he picked up a cool $Billion on the “short yen long Japanese stocks” in the last couple of months. So thanks to maybe a dozen? folks at the Bank Of Japan announcing they would not defend the yen and would like it a bit lower please, and Soros being rolling on money; he could short it into a hole in the ground with impunity. In the process transferring the wealth of millions of Japanese holding currency into his pocket.

Just have to not care too much about all the folks with pay checks that buy less and all the old retired Japanese who will now suffer more poverty…

So the BOJ decides that impoverishing a lot of folks but making their wages lower will “stimulate the economy” and drinks their own ink; then Soros pockets the gains to the Vulture class… While a 100 Million Japanese wonder what was just done to them, and why…

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